How jerk chicken nearly landed me in Munich

It was supposed to have been just another quite Friday evening on my own like so many others I’ve had lately. I’d treated myself to a Dry Martini of the luxurious variety, I’d made some good dinner which I’d consumed with a good glass of wine.. And the plan was to then just sorta kick back, enjoy life, rest up and get ready for Saturday night’s dinner and rum tasting with Tina.. I had it all pretty much laid out.

Tina had asked me to give her a crash course in rum so I had an entire evening laid out of classic rum drinks, a Jamaican styled dinner and then a whole bunch of different sipping rums.. I had it all planned out pretty well, the only thing that was left was for me to spend parts of my Friday evening throwing together some marinade for some Jamaican jerk chicken I was planning to make the next day – and to soak some kidney beans for a bean and rice side dish.. It seemed like a pretty straight forward and cosy little Friday evening project.

And then Dunkel showed up and fucked everything up big time.. Or well, he didn’t so much show up as he sent me a text message saying something along the lines of “I’m in town for about an hour and a half, waiting for a connecting train, I’m bored, I have beer, come keep me company!” – Well, I live about a ten minute walk from the train station, so keeping my old friend company was the least I could do. So I throw on a jacket, walk outside, realize it’s fucking cold, go back inside for a bottle of brandy to bring along just in case we need something to keep us extra warm during the hour-long wait (y’know, as you do!) .. and set off.

I arrived at the station some ten minutes later,having only received a few weird looks along the way. I bumped heads with Dunkel who immediately handed me a tall boy of Carlsberg lager, then grabbed my bottle of brandy and swigged away. We then went “Oh yeah, HI by the way!”, I sat down and we fell into conversation about everything from the good old days over music to music production and crazy plans for the future.. All while pounding beers and hitting the bottle pretty hard. Within about half an hour we were pretty far out of it and actually nearly on our way to spontaneously boarding a night train to Munich for the simple reason that none of us had ever been to Oktoberfest and it seemed a pretty fun adventure. As we realized that the only thing holding us back is the fact that I wasn’t carrying my VISA card and that I had a dinner planned with Tina the next day, we came to the conclusion that we’d probably hit the bottle a little to hard and that we should probably slow down a little.

Of course, by that time it was already too late. We’d been hitting it like it was the good old days without realizing that none of us had really partied much in the last odd year or so and as such, our tolerance wasn’t quite what it was back in the day. It was around this time, too, that the family with kids sitting next to us were starting to shoot us some pretty weird looks, so in the end it felt like a bit of a relief when Dunkel’s train arrived and he staggered onto it while I staggered home, locked myself in through the front door, put the bottle of brandy in the kitchen, threw Metallica’s “Kill ‘Em All” album on the stereo and started abusing the hell out of my speakers.. It was all pretty good times until I suddenly found myself thinking “Wasn’t I supposed to be doing something right now? Oooh.. Right.. The jerk marinade for tomorrow night! Fuck me, I’m hammered!”

So, I did what any person in my situation shouldn’t do, I went to the kitchen broke out a couple of chef knives, a blender, large amounts of some very hot chili peppers and a bunch of other ingredients.. To try something I’d never done before which was to make Jamaican jerk marinade from scratch, for the first time ever, without a recipe.. Now, I’d love to detail the process for you, my dear readers, but honestly, I’ll be damned if I remember the details. I do remember being generous with the rum in the marinade, though, and using only one Habanero pepper per person rather than the two I had planned.. Which eventually led me to tasting the finished mix and concluding that it was nowhere near hot enough, the concluding that my taste buds were probably pretty zapped and that maybe I should sleep on it – and thank God for that because when I tasted it the next morning (with a raging hangover) I concluded that it was probably well hot enough for someone like Tina. I also included that in my late night drunken cooking adventure, I’d forgot to add vinegar to the marinade but that it wasn’t really missing in the mix.

Last but not least I concluded that I make a mean Jamaican Jerk marinate.. Especially for a first try.. By someone who was, well, shitfaced at the time of the crime.. I couldn’t wait to show (and feed) Tina the result.. The only real problem was.. I’ll have absolutely no way of ever replicating the process because I forgot like half the steps and all I have to go by is this picture I snapped of some of the ingredients, possibly in an effort to help myself..

Oh and this one I snapped of the rum… Apparently think that I might forget which cheap Jamaican rum I used tor the marinade.. As if this wasn’t the only cheap Jamaican rum I own.